Inside the houses the walls also are whitewashed or colored, and generally there is some attempt made to decorate them by painting rude though symbolic designs half-way between the floor and ceiling. The floor is of earth, well packed down with water generally mixed with plaster, and the ceiling is of the sustaining poles and cross-beams, over which willows and earth have been placed. Invariably one can find feathered bahos, or prayer plumes, in the beams above, and no house could expect to be prospered where these offerings to "Those Above" were neglected. The chief family room serves as kitchen, dining-room, corn-grinding-room, bedroom, parlor, and reception-room. In one corner a quaint, hooded fireplace is built, and here the housewife cooks her _piki_ and other corn foods, boils or bakes her squash, roasts, broils, or boils the little meat she is able to secure, and sits during the winter nights while "the elders" tell stories of the wondrous past, when all the animals talked like human beings and the mysterious people--the gods--from the upper world came down to earth and associated with mankind. The corn-grinding trough is never absent. Sometimes it is on a little raised platform, and is large or small as the size of the family demands. The trough is composed either of wooden or stone slabs, cemented into the floor and securely fastened at the corners with rawhide thongs. This trough is then divided into two, three, four, or more compartments (according to its size), and in each compartment a sloping slab of basic rock is placed. Kneeling behind this, the woman who is the grinder of the meal (the true lady, _laf-dig_, even though a Hopi) seizes in both hands a narrower flat piece of the same kind of rock, and this, with the motion of a woman over a washboard, she moves up and down, throwing a handful of corn every few strokes on the upper side of her grinder. This is arduous work, and yet I have known the women and maidens to keep steadily at it during the entire day. When the meal is ground, a small fire is made of corn cobs, over which an earthern olla is placed. When this is sufficiently heated the meal is stirred about in it by means of a round wicker basket, to keep it from burning. This process partially cooks the meal, so that it is more easily prepared into food when needed.